Clownfish are just one of many reef species that are known for having a lot to say. Depositphotos –
For some time now, stationary underwater acoustic recorders have been used to log the ambient soundtracks of coral reefs as their inhabitants vocalize, eat, dig dens, or otherwise produce noises.
Utilizing signal processing software to analyze the recordings, it is possible to get a general sense of reef activity. If a scientist is seeking the sound of a specific species, however, they typically have to manually search through several months’ worth of acoustic data, painstakingly listening for the call of the sought-after fish in the playback.
The new computer system could change that.
Developed by a team of scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, it utilizes a neural network which was trained on known fish sounds. That network automatically searches through reams of recordings, finding the calls of specific species 25 times faster than is possible for a human listener.
In fact, the system is even capable of matching sounds to species in real time, right as it hears them. This capability could also allow the technology to add previously uncataloged calls to existing databases – if an unknown fish sound were to be picked up by the recorder, an onboard camera could be used to see which fish was making it.
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[For the balance of this very interesting article, please visit: https://newatlas.com/biology/neural-network-ai-fish-calls-coral-reefs/]
A paper on the study was recently published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Source: American Institute of Physics via EurekAlert
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